


for reasons wretched and divine

by Nimravidae



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 1940, 1940 for a bit, Declarations Of Love, First Time Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, Post-Apocalypse, emotionally charged foot washing but in a jesus way, essence sharing, i got all metaphysical with the sex again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 04:00:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20039584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimravidae/pseuds/Nimravidae
Summary: Crowley walks into a burning church, Aziraphale washes his feet. Crowley steals the eagle lectern, it takes Aziraphale 79 years to notice.





	for reasons wretched and divine

**Author's Note:**

> [self-indulgent nonsense alert] 
> 
> I think I had to invent the "emotionally charged foot washing but in a jesus way" tag for this.

He hadn’t meant to do it. It wasn’t as though he saw the statue doused in flaming rubble and thought, _I’m having that. _He had been too sore to even think about it, his scorched and burned feet absolutely throbbing. Even if the something short-circuited the consecration—either the bomb itself blowing the relic to oblivion and back and back to oblivion again, or just the deeply infernal nature of the bomb itself (and it’s owners, if Crowley was so far concerned) cancelling it out—the burns of the original few minutes he spent hopping about throbbed.

Crowley had made it his mission to get out of there as fast as possible, not even sparing a glance back at the lectern. 

Aziraphale had followed him, puttering along and babbling something about the books of prophecy. Distinctly not thank-you. They didn’t do thank you’s here. “And also, I suppose,” he’d said, nose in the air a bit, “for saving me from a _nightmare _of paperwork.”

“Thought it might be useful to have the favor of an angel,” Crowley said back over his shoulder, righting his hat and trying not to see that look in his eye. Something warm, something affectionate that immediately doused icy cold when Crowley spoke. Of course.

Leave it to him to immediately ruin it. 

He had stopped, turned around before shifting uncomfortably on his still-burned feet. He lifted on, gave it a subtle little shake to hopefully kick-start the healing process. “Kidding of course, angel.”

The response had come clipped and quick. “Kidding or not, this,” he wagged the bag of books, “in no such way ensures any sort of _favor _from me. Now sit down and take your shoes off.”

“Why on Earth would I do that?” Crowley asked, swinging his entire body around to continue walking away, trying to hide his obvious limp in the sway of his hips.

Aziraphale had huffed, had scurried back around in front of him, blocking his path. “You stood on consecrated ground. Sit down and take them off.”

Crowley did as he was told, but not without complaint. He found some pile of rubble suitable enough that he could delicately slip off his shoes.

Aziraphale brushed away some dust and knelt, cupping Crowley’s heel delicately. No matter how soft the touch, it bloody _hurt. _Crowley hissed, recoiling, but there was a deceptive strength to the soft angel. 

Much like his eyes, Crowley’s feet were one of the parts of him that he couldn’t really do much about. Well, maybe if he’d tried he could, but the effort that would go into his feet wasn’t worth it. He had never been the sandals sort. Unlike one of them, for a brief period. A trail of oil-slick scales coiled around his ankle, meandering down the inside of his foot. 

He winced as Aziraphale tugged off his sock, his body complaining as the fabric _stuck _to him for a moment. Aziraphale tutted and Crowley tried not to catch the whiff of brimstone or look at the melted once-sock that he laid aside. 

“Shouldn’t have done that,” Aziraphale had chided, blowing a cool stream over the still-burning flesh. It soothed, if only for a moment. “I can’tdo much about it, in fact I worry a ah-holy-miracle might make it worse.” 

“What was I supposed to do, leave you to be discorperated? Inconvenient, it is. I would know.” Crowley groaned, before immediately hissing an extremely serpentine hiss when Aziraphale prodded part of his foot that Crowley sincerely believed might have either been just raw flesh or entirely a blister. Or both. 

Aziraphale frowned, the expression tight and confused for a moment. “When were you— oh. Oh right.” 

“Yeah, the priest in Germany.” He wiggled his toes, frowning as Aziraphale delicately set that foot down before inspecting the other. “Hastur wouldn’t leave it be, didn’t want me to get a new body after that.” 

“Mortifying for you, was it?”

“Bear in mind I was performing a miracle for you,” he said, watching Aziraphale take much less time inspecting this foot. But he did not drop it either. He laid his other hand over Crowley’s ankle, thumb rubbing a subconscious circle over the top of his foot. It was a bit comforting. At the time, Crowley chalked it up to a quite literally magic touch that it soothes away just a touch of the pain. 

“Poorly, I would imagine, considering you were exercised for it.”

Crowley had just shrugged, the tension in his shoulders melted a touch as Aziraphale just kept touching him. He had started just sort of, the way one rubs down their thighs when they’re nervous. What Aziraphale has to be nervous about was beyond him. 

“Your feet are filthy,” he had said, eventually, the only thing that spurred Crowley to look down. They were. Blackened from the tops of his down with burn, but soot and ash climbed all the way up past his ankles, under the fabric of his trousers. It could have been from his smoking flesh, it could have also been from the rubble. 

Crowley didn’t know, and he figured he never would. “Could fix that,” he’d said, readying his hand to summon a bit of power from down below. 

Before he could, Aziraphale took his from on high, a jug of water and a rag sitting abnormally clean in the refuse of war. Crowley’s throat went dry as Aziraphale shucked off his jacket, folding it in a miraculously dustless spot.

“No use taking care of this when you’re a mess,” he said, rolling a sleeve to his elbow. Crowley couldn’t drag his eyes from Aziraphale’s forearms, couldn’t look away from where he knelt there, taking one of Crowley’s feet back in his hands. 

He couldn’t look, it seared his eyes like his flesh in that church to look. He watched the stars instead. The lights had been bombed out—one of the few times he could see them. They were ever more clear when he squeezes his eyes shut as Aziraphale took up the jug. 

The water soothed the burn like nothing else, drawing a shivering gasp from high in Crowley’s throat. His toes curled out of reflex, the sting forcing back a tiny whimper. Aziraphale hushed him, rag soft and gentle as meticulously cleaned and ash and dirt from Crowley’s foot. 

Each pass drew Crowley closer to something he couldn’t explain, something he would never be able to articulate. Every inch of him screamed to look, to drink in the sight, to watch Aziraphale’s hands washing him clean. 

It took every inch of his self-control, of his restraint, to just crack an eye down at him. 

At the same moment, Aziraphale looked up. His rag froze around the top of Crowley’s foot as Aziraphale caught his gaze from behind his sunglasses—or at least Crowley thought he did. It was dark, his sunglasses were _dark. _There was no way he could see _how _Crowley was looking him.

Crowley was convinced. He had to be convinced. Slowly Aziraphale’s lips parted like he was about to speak. His eyes filled with, with something that Crowley couldn’t look at. 

He turned his gaze back up the skies, like a coward. Aziraphale refilled the jug, and washed his feet.

“I should head out,” he said, once the ash was gone and Aziraphale had vanished his jug and rag. He hadn’t dropped Crowley’s foot yet, the one he’d washed last. There was a silence that lingered, even when Crowley spoke. “I was sleeping a bit of the past century, should probably check out what’s new.”

He went to tug his foot away and Aziraphale, as though suddenly remembering where they were, dropped it with a small sound. 

“You shouldn’t be doing much walking on that,” he said, as Crowley blinked and his shoes were back on his feet — wrapped in bandages that he did not manifest on. Aziraphale’s eyes flicked upwards, as they did every time he did Crowley a favor. Like he was waiting for the bolt of lightning to smite him down where he stood. 

It never did. 

“I’ll be fine, angel,” he said, softer than anticipated. He meant to bite it, hiss it, as he sauntered off to the best of his ability. He didn’t even get that far. Aziraphale took him by the elbow, sliding alongside him. 

“Here. Hold onto me, I’ll help you. I’m assuming you didn’t park too far.”

He didn’t. He never parked far. He tried to think about nothing, about anything but Aziraphale washing his feet and bandaging him. Anything but the way he looked at him, the brush of their hands over the handle. Anything but the way his eyes glimmered in the burn of the wings behind him. 

The glow of the flaming lectern filling those eyes with so much—so much—he couldn’t even say it. Crowley let Aziraphale help him almost halfway there before pausing, waving a hand to unlock it. “Go situate yourself, angel,” he said. “I need—forgot something. Demonic things.”

Aziraphale frowned, his brow knitting together and his arms hugging the case closer to his body. “Are you certain?”

“Of course.” A sniff. “I’ll be fine.” He walked fast, his feet not aching so much with the buzzing memory of Aziraphale’s hands and the water and the way it _felt. _He shuddered, pushing up his glasses to rub his eyes.

The church didn’t burn him again, and he glanced a few times to make sure no one was watching as he stood in front of the lectern, the fire long-burned off it’s scorched and blackened wings. 

He imagined it, for a moment, sitting on a plinth in his flat—at the end of a long hall. Somewhere he could move about later if the fancy struck him. He imagined what it would look like, imagined it catching the low-light of the moon outside the windows. 

And when he was done imagine it, it was gone. 

And Crowley went back to his car. 

The eagle was waiting for him, exactly where he’d imagined it once he dropped Aziraphale at the shop and circled back to his own flat. Looked nice. Exactly how he remembered it. 

_###_

Fifteen years later, Aziraphale stopped in for a cup of tea. He walked right past it twice, and if he noticed, he didn’t say a thing. 

Fifty years after that, in 2005, he’d popped ‘round for a few glasses of wine, sitting primly on the edge of Crowley’s uncomfortable sofa and complaining about the drab decor. “Really would do to get a spot of colour in here, wouldn’t it?” He asked, craning his neck to drink in the entire space.

Crowley had pointed at the Mona Lisa draft on the wall. “S’got colour,” he said, already awfully deep into their fourth bottle. 

“Something _nice,” _Aziraphale clarified. He’d looked down the hall with the lectern, but again, if he noticed, failed to say a word. 

He was back two years after that, to drop off something Crowley had left in the shop. And a year after that to pick up something he’d left the year before. 

All told, Aziraphale had been to Crowley’s flat five times before he noticed. 

The fifth time had been the day the world ended. 

Aziraphale was supposed to have gone home. The bus wobbled and shook its way across the roads—all suspiciously empty for London, but he supposed after the incident on the M25, most people had gone home—and moseyed on right past where it should have turned, driver compelled by some strange urge he won’t be able to explain tomorrow, for his bookshop. 

He’d smiled, weak, and unhappy, at Crowley's confused frown. _I don’t want to see it, _he admitted. 

Crowley huffed a sigh out his nose. _I’ll make up the couch. _

They both knew he wouldn’t, but it was nice to pretend. It was always nice to pretend. It was nice to pretend, like when they picked up the sushi from a place not usually open, nor so usually accustomed to take-away, pretending like they’d be eating. 

They didn’t, they sat there, on either end of an infrequently used table. Crowley’s shades between them. He couldn’t stop smelling smoke, presumably from both the Bentley and the bookshop fire. 

But it smelled different, it smelled like the burn of holy things, like charred flesh mixed with charred rubble. It smelled like Saint Michaels on November 14th. 

And thinking about the Blitz always made something in his stomach twist up in knots. He glanced, quickly, down the hall while Aziraphale stared at his sushi. 

Then, of course, back over where Crowley had looked. His brow furrowed with something distant and faint before recognition washed over him.

“Don’t start,” Crowley said, but of course Aziraphale had already started. 

“Is that—”

“I said don’t start.”

“Crowley!” 

Tilting his head back with a groan, Crowley prepared himself for the lecture that promised to follow the scrape of the chair legs over his floor. Aziraphale got up, walking himself down the hall to the plinth. “It is,” he said, circling the lectern. “It—you took it?”

“Of course I did, angel.” Crowley got up to follow after a moment, hands in his pocket as he distinctly did not look at Aziraphale. His feet hurt with the memory of that night. They hurt and buzzed at the same moment. “Evil innit? Stealing from a church.”

Evil.

Entirely evil. Really, properly evil. He never walked past it, circled it, touching the stains the fire made on its wings and wondering a thousand things at once. Wondering about his own burned wings, wondering about Aziraphale’s pristine ones, wondering about that look in his eyes caught in the firelight and illuminated by the way that Crowley’s chest exploded with the same emotion reflecting back at him. 

Wondering about Aziraphale and about Aziraphale and about Aziraphale. His fingers walked from the center of the eagle’s back to the tip of his wing. For wretched reasons, he stole this. 

Horrid, wretched, reasons. Nothing good at all. 

The thoughts it gave him, the memories of Aziraphale kneeing, washing Crowly’s feet, an unsung prayer, the command, the Latin that turned his tongue black even thinking about it. All of it, reprehensible and vile. Nothing a demon wanted any part of.

_Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos_

_I give you a new commandment, that ye love one another as I have loved you. _

_As I have loved you._

His fingers walked off the edge, his hand falling back down through the emptiness back to his side. 

Nothing more wretched than loving an angel.

Aziraphale would not stop staring at the eagle, eyes tracing the scars of the burning rubble. “Is this what you went back for? The demon thing you forgot?”

“Yeah.” 

Crowley sniffed, spared a glance towards curious Dracaena—it shuddered and looked away. As best a plant could at least. “Stole it.”

“I can tell.”

“From a church.”

Something twitched, almost a ghost of a smile, at the corner of Aziraphale’s lips. “I recall.” 

Crowley waited, for something, for anything. Just like he waited after that night in the Bentley with the tartan thermos full of promises that Crowley swore to himself he’d never break. Just like he waited after Aziraphale washed his feet in the ruins of everything. Just like he waited for him to come around after their spat at the turn of the century, or waited for him in Rome, or waited for him in Mesopotamia. 

He waited, like he’s waited six thousand years. 

Aziraphale reached in front of the lectern, gently taking Crowley’s hand. “Did you know, then?”

Crowley swallowed. “I had an idea. Wasn’t sure. Thought maybe you were being nice.” _As I have loved you. _“Maybe it meant something. I took it regardless, because it reminded me of—well—It reminded me—don’t make me say it, Aziraphale. I don’t want to—”

“Go too fast?” Aziraphale finished, stepping forward. 

He wasn't sober enough to handle this, but he knew he couldn’t do it without the buzz in the back of his mind, the liquid fire in his veins as Aziraphale reached his other hand up to stroke along the line of Crowley’s jaw. “That.” 

Aziraphale nodded, taking a half-step forward. Crowley turned his hand in Aziraphale’s grip, linking their fingers together. His heart pounded needlessly in his chest but he couldn’t stop it. 

It only got worse as Aziraphale pushed himself up, sealing their lips together with a quiet reverence that Crowley never thought he would be able to fathom again. His entire body sang like the choir’s he abandoned, he filled with the righteous heat that once burned his wings to ash.

Aziraphale kissed him and for a moment his entire Essence felt consecrated. Burning from the inside out, collapsing and re-making like a dying star birthing a new galaxy. Aziraphale kissed him and the world remade itself anew. There was nothing but them, nothing but Aziraphale’s hand on his face, his lips pressing to his. Nothing but the squeeze of their palms together.

To part felt like tearing apart the edges of existence, like wrenching two halves of one whole. Every nerve in his body alight, Crowley refused to stay that way for much longer. 

Dropping Aziraphale’s hand, he surged forward, taking his face in his palms and kissing him again. This time with all the desperate passion of six thousand years. Aziraphale stepped forward and Crowley stepped back. Like a dance, moving together with perfect anticipation of the other’s moves, Aziraphale’s fingers undid Crowley’s belt and Crowley’s found the juncture of his bowtie to pull it free. 

They moved in near-perfect time, a sudden, all-consuming fire sweeping around them and burning at every inch of Crowley’s being. He needed to be closer to him, he needed to feel him, he needed him, he needed him, he needed him. 

His lips went for Aziraphale’s throat, the collar exposed by Crowley’s fingers skillfully working buttons while Aziraphale fixated on clawing off Crowley’s shirt. 

Aziraphale tossed Crowley’s scarf aside and Crowley snapped, a miracle folding up Aziraphale’s clothing perfectly. 

“Do you—” He asked, as Aziraphale’s eyes filled with something that was hard to look at. But this time, he didn’t look away, this time Crowley looked back. 

“Lo—I—”

“Don’t invoke Her, angel. Not now.”

“No, no,” Aziraphale breathed, a steadying hand laying on Crowley’s heaving chest. Shirt. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. “I—Crowley did you understand what I said that night?”

Those eyes, burning blue—the look reflected in the fire, in the moonlight, reflected back at him for seventy-nine years after that moment. How could he not? How could he not look at Aziraphale and see the constant refrain of _I love you _rolling through him.

How he survived it, how Crowley made it seventy-nine years knowing Aziraphale loved him, and knowing that to say it back, to act upon it, would push him away? Crowley would never know. 

“I love you,” Crowley said—not for the first time. Not really, at least. He’d said it at the Globe, watching Hamlet nearly flop. He’d said it outside the birthing hospital in Tadfield. He’d said it that very evening, on a bench, sharing a bottle of wine. 

He said it in the garden, he said it a thousand times, he said it a million times. 

_I’ll get that one._

_My treat._

_Go on, angel, have the last one. _

_I love you, I love you, I love you. _

Aziraphale’s lips tasted like everything Crowley imagined. “I love you,” he whispered against Crowley’s. “I love you, my dear, _wonderful, _boy.”

They made their way slowly, kissing and touching and exploring, to the bedroom—where Crowley tipped them both into silk sheets and rolled himself alongside Aziraphale. They pushed together, nude and unafraid and unbound by anything anymore. 

Crowley’s wings made appearance first, aching and crumbling ash that smelled like Saint Michaels and the Bentley and the flames that rolled off Aziraphale’s sword. Aziraphale kissed them, kissed his way across the back of them, kissed his way down Crowley’s spine until he was kissing his way inside him. All clever tongue, clever fingers.

He’d never been had like that, never suffered the heat of a tongue splitting him open and taunting his rim. Crowley sprawled on his belly, whimpering and whining as he’s stretched and opened. 

“I want to look at you,” Aziraphale said, sitting back on his haunches. Crowley rolled onto his back, and Aziraphale’s still-slick fingers worked their way back inside him, wrenching a wicked gasp from his lips. “See you get lost in the pleasure of it all.”

Wretched angel. 

Aziraphale purred, pushing a third finger into his body and curling them, making Crowley cry out with a sharp, desperate, sound. The sort of sounds demons didn’t make. 

“My divine,” a kiss, to his pulse-point, as Aziraphale twisting and curled his fingers again, making Crowley’s cock flex—flushed and hard and leaking—against his belly. “Divine demon.” 

He nearly laughed, if he wasn’t busy immediately choking out another groan as Aziraphale twisted his fingers, forcing bright-white galaxies from behind his eyes. “Please, angel,” he managed, behind a ragged breath filled with other pleads.

Aziraphale didn’t make Crowley beg. 

He withdrew his fingers and pushed into him, Crowley’s limbs clinging to him like he might slip and vanish if he let go. Aziraphale moved within him and Crowley’s nails bit into his back. The slick slide of his cock inside him, filling him in was he never thought he could be filled, touching him in ways he never thought he could be touched—it was very nearly too much.

It felt like the burning under his feet in the Cathedral, it felt like the Fall, it felt like the first time he felt the sun of the Garden on his scales, it felt like Aziraphale’s hands doing the most intimate of rites. For a moment, with Aziraphale inside him, kissing him, having him so entirely, Crowley very nearly felt God again.

A sound escaped him that neither of them took time to speak about as Aziraphale rocked inside him, whispering Crowley’s name into the skin of his chest. He bit a few times, kissed, left bruises that Crowley vowed to never let heal. Let them be his tattoos, let them be his new scars. Something he never wanted to lose, something he never wanted to forsake. 

“Faster?” He asked, half-panting against his skin.

“Of course,” Aziraphale murmured, taking the direction in stride. He took his thrusts with a bit more speed, turning whimpers and keens to full-blown moans as he properly ravished Crowley against his bed. 

The two of them locked together, the tentative tendrils of their Essences mingling in ways that Essences never and yet always were meant to. They pulled together, cosmically, infinitely, closer—the edges of themselves, of who they always were, curled around one another. There was nothing to separate them, nothing to keep them apart. 

For a moment they were one in the same, an inhabitance beyond the scope of mortal understanding, beyond the scope of mortal reasoning. Something new, something beyond Heaven, beyond Hell. They were everything and nothing at once, both the vastness of the space between the stars and the entirety of everything _but. _For a moment they were something entirely Themselves, co-existing, sharing everything at once. They both cried out, Crowley’s voice carrying Aziraphale’s cry of pleasure as he shuddered and came, a physical sensation washing through them both at once as Crowley felt, in both himself and not himself, the physical-existential pulse of Aziraphale’s orgasm. 

He felt it as his own and as something happening onto him—the hot rush in the physical body, and the throb of holy-pleasure and completion beyond comprehension rolling through Aziraphale’s Essence. 

It was too much to withstand, his fingers clawing at the material back of Aziraphale’s body, his lips parted as he gasped Aziraphale’s name and Aziraphale responded in kind in the same dual-voice, dual-self. Aziraphale stilled inside him, letting Crowley’s body and Essence throb and roll and ache in the same way as he felt Aziraphale’s orgasm. 

Hours passed before they properly detangled, the sun starting to pull herself up the sky. Aziraphale fell into the bed beside him, his wings put away and his Essence tucked back where it belonged. Crowley’s jaw remained slack, his fingers numbly searching for Aziraphale’s. They found each other quickly.

They were always good at that, when the need came. 

“We—” Aziraphale started, and then stopped. “I—”

“Yeah.” Crowley squeezed his hand. “Yeah.”

He closed his eyes. Aziraphale squeezed back. 

“Crowley?” He asked. Crowley groaned as exhaustion started to overtake. They had things to think about, things to do. Heaven and Hell would be looking for them. But it didn’t matter, at least not right now.

“Yeah, angel?”

Right now was this. Right now was them.

“I love you.”

“You said.”

“I wanted to say it again.” 

Crowley turned his head to take him in. He brought their clasped hands to his lips and kissed the back of Aziraphale’s once. Sweet and chaste. 

"I love you, angel. Always have." 

There, in the cold-cast darkness of Crowley's loft, Aziraphale's lips curved the faintest edge of a smile. And somewhere in the deep recesses of the halls, an eagle lectern sat exactly where one demon and one angel imagined it ought to. 

**Author's Note:**

> I mean, I admit I never want to write something where I'm sending chunks to people asking "does it sound like I have a foot fetish because I don't I have a religious rite fetish" again.
> 
> Find me (not talking about this) on [Tumblr](https://tooeasilyconsidered.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/hipsteroric)


End file.
